Service processors are processors, or other types of integrated circuits, that are used to manage or co-manage, alongside or part of one or more general purpose processors, specific functionality in a computer system. This functionality may include computer system diagnostics, power resource management, and remote computer system configuration and management. There is no direct communication between service processors, that is the service processors are horizontally and/or vertically silo-ed. Some example service processors include Hewlett-Packard Company's INTEGRATED LIGHTS OUT™ (iLO) series of service processors.
Vertically silo-ed means that a separate infrastructure exists for monitoring the hardware, virtualization, and application stacks. Horizontal silo-ed means that there is no direct communication among the peers, as a result the aggregation and correlation is performed at a centralized location. A peer is a service processor. This central location may be a management computer system or management blade.
Monitoring may involve the use of various hardware (HW) and/or Software (SW) stack sensor and actuators that monitor the functionality of the HW/SW stacks. These sensors and actuators may be used in the aforementioned computer system diagnostics, power resource management, and remote computer system configuration and management.